Tag Archives: Adam and Joe

Adam and Joe Update: Boggins Sketch

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The Boggins Debacle sketch.

Hate Boggins. Kill the bastard.

Boggins Sketch Final

Finished and re-scanned the Bath time sketch. It’s handy to have a proper sketch scan incase you cock it up when you colour it in.

Also I might print it out and do a thick ‘colour in the lines style’ black outline version just for fun.

Adam & Joe Bath time Sketch Final

Adam And Joe Guide Update: Draft Cover

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Been planning an update for the Idiothole’s Guide I made a year ago, ever since the show time changed from 9:30-12 to 10:00-1:00.

But I was in too deep with the Barbara Cartlands.

The grip of obsession is finally beginning to thaw a little enough to sketch out some pages and to plan the page updates.

I think a few new sections might pop-in.

Here is a rough sketch of the new cover.

Adam & Joe's bath time. Bowies Special Bubbles in a bottle on the far left.

The posters on the wall might not work on the cover because of the font and the logo.

So I might just use Adam and Joe in the tub cropped tighter.

Well.. lets see how it goes.

Originally I planned to have Bowie bathing in the tub as well.

But it didn’t work either, partly because Bowie looks like something out of the Universe and partly because I can’t suspend my belief to convince myself that 3 men can fit in a smallish tub.

I want Adam and Joe to be comfy. Good thing Adam is small.

I have a lot of drawings with bathtubs or bathing.

I do spend an inordinately long amount of time in the loo both at work and at home.

It’s a very peaceful place.

On the other hand I don’t like baths.

They are pretty darn boring and the water never stays hot enough.

I just don’t like the idea of stewing in my own filth.

The ex and I used to take baths and smoke one in the bath, but you know I think the loo is a place thats much nicer on your own.

Give me a nice super-shower any day.

Text The Nation Success!!

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IT GOT READ OUT! HOLY MOLY ROLLER NOVOCAINE!

I’m so excited I think I could die. I just listened to it 4 times in a row already.

Download it quick (Attack of the buck 07.05.2011) before its gone for ever! Or from here if the podcast expires!

Oh golly wolly.

No words can fully express my feelings on this matter.

Text The Nation: Body Fiddles

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The Nations Favorite Feature.

This is my contribution to a radio feature for the Adam and Joe Show on BBC 6 Music. This is a feature where Adam & Joe pose a question and listeners respond by sending in emails in the hope that they are funny and A&J will read them out.

It is unlikely to ever get read out (Damn them!!)

So I might as well put it up here since I’m very behind on all my postings.

I’ve never yet had the privilege of being read out.

I cry often just thinking about it. Being so interactive is ruining my mental health. (Damn you Hood!)

But here is my TTN anyway:

The Text The Nation for this week was body fiddles. Weird things you do to occupy time or have a mild OCD about. (e.g Cracking knuckles, jiggling your knee)

Dear Adam and Joe & Co.

Fiddle:

I like to take a small but long strip of hair (Left side of head ONLY, and ALWAYS with the same bit of hair. I can always find it) and run my fingers down (NOT through it) it until it is perfectly smooth and silky.

Then I like to loop the strip (one hand ONLY) and stroke the back of my left ear one time, then back of neck, one time with the smooth looped part.

Sometimes after much smoothening (is that a word?) I like to stick the strand backwards over my ear (almost a Princess Leia, but more crazy) and then I make my partner look at it and FORCE them to praise me insincerely.

Then I start smoothening it again. If it is not perfectly smooth the sensation is RUINED.

Toodles.
x

j

Update 09.May.2011:

IT GOT READ OUT! HOLY MOLY ROLLER NOVOCAINE!

I’m so excited I think I could die. I just listened to it 4 times in a row already.

Adam and Joe Illustration Crit.

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Drawing only half a Bowie face behind a not-Joe looking Joe is a cop-out. I know its a cop out because Ive used this trick often.

So this James Hood fellow is the new ‘resident’ illustrator for Adam and Joe at the Big British Castle…

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Ok so I’m jealous. I’ll admit it.

Madly jealous.

I feel terribly petty about it, but Adam has plugged this guy in every show since they came back from their long sabbatical and it fills me with both with an inner rage and envious bile.

Damn him. And his ‘resident’ status.

I want it to be me!!

I feel this way about anyone Adam and Joe mention – During Text the Nation particularly. There’s an immediate and INTENSE resentment towards the person whose emails have been read out. I want the world to IMPLODE violently so I’m the ONLY surviving Adam and Joe listener so they HAVE to read out my email, even if it’s just a list of my groceries for the week.

My rage against Mr. Hood is however largely because I genuinely don’t like the way he draws. At all, on any level – which I will go into in detail below.

So lets put my pettiness and territorial jealousy to one side and critique this mans work as objectively as I can (snort)

Please feel free to disagree as volubly as you like about my critique and please post any rebuttals in the comment section below. I always feel a good crit is meant to inflame and aggravate.

Lets dive right in there:

To begin – I dislike scribble drawings.

I mean, really, this faux-naive cartoon style is in itself so immensely irritating.

I’m not talking about Outsider art or even the naive style of painting (both of which I enjoy), because they have some other redeeming qualities beyond perfect and immaculate drawing. Colour, texture, humour, content, intensity of detail.

I’m talking about badly drawn cartoons that seem (to me) to be stylistically manufactured to wallpaper over poor drawing skills and laziness of observation. (I’m channeling Foz and Gary here, can you feel it?)

I’m happy to forgive it as a ‘style’ if the drawing is secondary to the content.

Perhaps the content is dark or biting or funny or witty (á la Shrigley) but if nothing new is brought to the table either stylistically or in terms of content I don’t know what there is to look at.

Therefore I find James Hood’s work rather mediocre. He brags about having won ‘Young cartoonist of the year’ – twice no less. For what I’m not really sure. (meow pussy cat)

1. His work is not funny ha ha.

2. It’s not even funny I’m-laughing-on-the-inside.

This drawing bores me and simultaneously irritates me with the terrible drawing of Joe and Adam and Photoshop colouring in. 

Adam said he ‘liked the naive style and almost grotesque drawings’ but it isn’t enough one way or another. There’s not really enough of anything. Not weird enough, not detailed enough, not funny enough.

And it’s all so Tesco’s basic. He could fill this page end to end with characters instead of largely using the Photoshop paint-bucket fill tool to colour it black

Someone on the comment feed compared him to the illustrator Andrew Rae (hardly to Rae’s credit). Rae’s work is in fact very carefully drawn and is crawling with small but interesting details.

Andrew Rae: Last Night A spread from my Comic Grey Matter as featured in Posterpaper by JaguarShoes Collective

Hood again: This one is marginally better than the space one.

Hood’s work on the other hand feels heavily stylized. Heavy being the right word. It’s all flat and lacking any subtle touches. The ‘shaky hand’, the little half-finished lines, the lumpiness, the one-tone colours in pastels.

Yawn yawn. Generic cartoon network/Nickleodeon minus the fun animation and silly voices.

Am I being hugely bitchy? Probably, but nonetheless I think my criticisms are valid ones.

Below is a Nickleodeon cartoon called ‘Arrgh! Real Monsters’ which reminds me of this style. Lots of half lines and scratches and lumpiness. There are a variety of cartoons like this. But I particularly like the monsters in this one. They have fun little quirks and live in the sewer eating unpleasant things.

Hood’s likenesses are also poor – this is coming from someone who really struggles to produce decent likenesses. Perhaps that’s what irks – I struggle – this guy just poops out some shoddy scribble and is PLUGGED, oh my lord how he is plugged, on the show. (So much resentment)

Unless labeled as such I wouldn’t be able to tell that this was about Adam and Joe at all. I mean come on man, take the time to draw Joe a chin. Don’t be so bloody lazy.

To his credit however, I think his output is prompt and very quick, as it has to be to make one for every show for the next 12 weeks.

So to conclude – I’m just not feeling this guy. On any level. Drawing, humour or observation.

And I suppose am vaguely disappointed in Adam’s taste in illustration (although I suppose it does sort of fit the studenty-scribbly aesthetic I’ve always imagined A&J probably have.)

You may of course, dismiss this critique as biased and vitriolic, and some of it, perhaps is (Young Cartoonist of the Year. Snort.) but largely I stand by my critique of Jame’s work.

You know, it’s OK. It’s not bad, but it’s not good.

It’s just so….Meh.

Scribbles. I mean, what can I say.